BOOK THE SECOND.

The dream-life becomes a partial reality. Sordello's wanderings carry him one day to the walls of Mantua, outside which Palma is holding a "Court of Love." Eglamor sings. His song is incomplete. Sordello feels what is wanting; catches up the thread of the story; and sings it to its proper close.[[14]] His triumph is absolute. He is installed as Palma's minstrel in Eglamor's place. Eglamor accepts his defeat with touching gentleness, and lies down to die. This poet is meant to embody the limited art, which is an end in itself, and one with the artist's life. Sordello, on the other hand, represents the boundless aspirations which art may subserve, but which must always leave it behind. The parallel will be stated more distinctly later on.

Sordello's first wish is fulfilled. He has found a career which will reconcile his splendid dreams with his real obscurity, and set him, by right of imagination—the true Apolloship—apart from other men. But his true difficulties have yet to begin. It is not enough that he feels himself a transcendent personage. He must make others believe that he is so. Every act of imagination is with him an act of existence, or as Mr. Browning calls it of Will; but this self-asserting was much easier with the imaginary crowd than it can be with the real one. Sordello is soon at cross-purposes with his hearers: for when he sings of human passion, or human prowess, they never dream of identifying him with it; and when he sings of mere abstract modes of being, they do not understand.

The love of abstract conception is indeed the rock on which he splits. The feelings which are real to us are unreal to him, because they are accidental. What is real to him is the underlying consciousness which according to his view is permanent: the "intensest" self described in "Pauline"—the mind which is spoken of in the fifth "book" of "Sordello" (vol. i. page 236) as nearest to God when emptied of even thought; and his aim is to put forth all the qualities which this absolute existence can assume, and yet be reflected in other men's minds as independent of them. This lands him in struggles not only with his hearers but with himself—for he is unused to expressing what he feels; and with a language which at best could convey "whole perceptions" like his, in a very meagre form, or a fragmentary one. He still retains the love of real life and adventure which inspired his boyish dreams. There is nothing, as I have said, that he does not wish to be; and now, amidst commonplace human beings, his human desires often take a more simple and natural form. But the poet in him pushes the man aside, and bids him, at all events, wait. He does not know that he is failing through the hopeless disunion of the two. He silences his better humanity, and retains the worst; for he is more and more determined to succeed at whatever cost. Yet failure meets him on every side. He is too large for his public, but he is also too small for it. Every question raised even in talk carries him into the infinite. Every man of his audience has a practical answer ready before he has. Naddo plies him with common sense. "He is to speak to the human heart—he is not to be so philosophical—he is not to seem so clever." Shallow judges pull him to pieces. Shallow rivals strive to sing him down.[[15]] He loses his grasp of the ideal. He cannot clutch the real. His imagination dries up.

Meanwhile Adelaide has died. Salinguerra, who had joined the Emperor at Naples, is brought back in hot haste by the news that Eccelino has retired to a monastery, has disclaimed the policy of his House; and is sealing his peace with the Guelph princes by the promised marriage of his sons Eccelino and Alberic with the sisters of Este; and of his daughter Palma with Count Richard of San Bonifacio himself. He is coming to Mantua. Sordello must greet him with his best art. But Sordello shrinks from the trial, and escapes back to Goito, whence Palma has just departed. What his Mantuan life has taught him is thus expressed (vol. i. page 130):—

"The Body, the Machine for Acting Will,

Had been at the commencement proved unfit;

That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it,

Mankind—no fitter: was the Will Itself

In fault?"